[Translator’s Notes]
Hello, everyone!
😊 Welcome to another story!
This story will include several other fandoms, not just Marvel, but the main timeline will still take place in the Marvel universe.
The MC owns a restaurant that can open dimensional doors to other worlds, so later on he will travel to and have adventures in different universes.
I hope you enjoy the story!
Happy reading!
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Warm yellow light filled the restaurant, while the rich aroma of bone broth lingered in the air.
Sunlight streamed through the open glass windows like a veil of spun gold, spilling across the coffee brown dining tables.
A young man sat at one of them.
He wore a white T-shirt beneath a black motorcycle jacket, his cheek propped against his right hand as he stared blankly out the window at the towering skyscrapers, endless traffic, and dense crowds beyond.
His name was Evan Whitaker, and he wasn’t a native of this world.
He had transmigrated here one week ago.
Seven days earlier, Evan had been browsing the internet when he accidentally clicked on a pop-up ad and downloaded a game.
The description sounded interesting enough, so instead of deleting it, he installed the thing and decided to give it a try.
The game covered a surprisingly broad range of mechanics.
The player took the role of a chef running a restaurant.
Inside that restaurant stood a wooden door connected to countless different worlds, allowing the player to serve customers from entirely different universes.
At the same time, the player was also a Gourmet Hunter who could travel through the Dimensional Door in search of unknown delicacies, hunting creatures and gathering all sorts of exotic ingredients.
Captured animals could be raised on the restaurant’s Ranch, while collected plants could be cultivated on its Farm, creating a stable supply of ingredients.
Management, combat, adventure, collection, the game had a little of everything and was ridiculously addictive.
Evan had thrown himself into it, quickly completing the tutorial and clearing the beginner phase.
One by one, he unlocked the restaurant’s basic facilities: the Storage, the Farm, the Ranch…
Then, the instant he unlocked the final facility, the Dimensional Door—
The world changed.
The scenery outside his window transformed from rows of low-rise buildings into skyscrapers that pierced the clouds.
The shop signs outside, once covered in Chinese characters ranging from neat and dignified to wild, flowing calligraphy, were suddenly written in curling English letters instead.
The game became a System.
The restaurant became real.
His cramped bedroom expanded into a restaurant hundreds of square meters in size, decorated in an understated but unmistakably luxurious style.
The wooden door truly became capable of connecting to other worlds.
The Farm and Ranch became miniature worlds of their own, while the Storage turned into a separate Storage Space.
And Evan himself inherited every ability his game character possessed.
In the blink of an eye, he went from an overweight shut-in in the making to a six foot one, broad shouldered man with clean, well defined muscle.
Generally speaking, people who transmigrated with a Cheat Ability tended to do pretty well for themselves.
Of course, that depended entirely on where they transmigrated to.
As a cautious homebody whose survival instincts were firmly intact, Evan had absolutely no desire to end up in the Marvel universe, a disaster magnet crawling with aliens, superhumans, and absurdly advanced technology, where there was every chance you could die five minutes after arriving.
He would’ve much preferred a perfectly ordinary world where he could use his Cheat Ability to become obscenely rich and spend the rest of his life happily surrounded by beautiful women.
Unfortunately, that was nothing more than wishful thinking.
Transmigration wasn’t exactly something that came with a destination selector.
Since he was already here, he intended to make the best of it.
Besides, it wasn’t as though he could never go home.
It would simply take time.
The Dimensional Door inside the restaurant could connect to countless worlds.
Naturally, that meant it could eventually connect to Evan’s original world as well.
Once that happened, he could go home.
The problem was that the Dimensional Door couldn’t connect to every world from the beginning.
New worlds had to be unlocked one at a time, and the only way to unlock them was by completing missions issued by the System.
Every time a new world opened, the System issued a World-Specific Mission.
Completing that mission unlocked the next world.
And every World-Specific Mission had the same basic requirement, earn a certain amount of money.
The money had to come from operating the restaurant.
Anything earned through any other method didn’t count.
In other words, the better the restaurant performed, the more money Evan made.
The more money he made, the more worlds he could unlock.
And the more worlds he unlocked, the greater the chance that one of them would turn out to be his original world.
Making money by cooking?
For Evan, that was practically easy mode.
He had spent nearly two decades living in a country with thousands of years of culinary tradition, and he’d spent several more years being thoroughly corrupted by food anime on top of that.
Once the System granted him its cooking skills, all of that accumulated knowledge underwent a qualitative transformation.
In an instant, he’d become a master chef.
Food, clothing, shelter, and transportation were the four basic necessities of life.
For a master chef capable of traveling between worlds and learning cuisines that didn’t even exist on Earth, making money should have been ridiculously easy.
The restaurant’s revenue over the past week proved it.
Better yet, the restaurant’s accounting system didn’t care about exchange rates.
One yen counted as one unit.
One dollar counted as one unit.
One Chinese yuan counted as one unit.
If customers hadn’t been limited to entering through Dimensional Doors that appeared at random, Evan was certain he would have completed the mission required to unlock the next world long ago:
Earn 100,000.
Come to think of it, it’s almost noon and barely anyone’s shown up today.
Evan returned to his senses and looked around the empty restaurant.
“Ding-a-ling…”
The thought had barely crossed his mind when, as though he’d summoned someone simply by thinking about it, the crisp chime of a bell rang through the restaurant.
The wooden door engraved with twisting vine patterns slowly swung open.
A middle-aged man stepped through.
He wore a black tank top.
A faint blue glow shone through the center of his chest.
A rag was wrapped around one hand, and his curly hair and scruffy beard made him look as though grooming had become an optional activity several days ago.
The sharp stink of metal and sweat clung to him.
He smelled like he’d spent the last ten days working a forge without once taking a shower.
One look at the man’s clothes, and at the face that regularly appeared on magazine covers, was enough for Evan to recognize him immediately.
Tony Stark.
The billionaire playboy who had been missing for more than half a month.
“Welcome to the Dimensional Restaurant.” Evan rose from his seat and walked over.
“I’m Evan Whitaker, the owner. What can I get you?”
“…” Tony didn’t answer.
Instead, he stood there wearing an unusually grave expression, as though Evan wasn’t even in front of him, and slowly examined his surroundings.
The rich aroma of bone broth.
The warm air.
The bright lights.
The relaxed atmosphere.
It all felt strangely comfortable.
Almost like home.
“Haaah…” Tony exhaled, then shook his head with a sigh.
“Never thought the great genius Tony Stark would start hallucinating from too much stress.”
“…”
Evan stared at him speechlessly.
What an idiot.
Fine.
Time for a reality check.
Evan leaned forward.
At the same time, his right hand shot out and planted itself squarely over Tony Stark’s face.
Then he shoved.
Hard.
“OW!” Tony yelped as a palm smacked into his face and sent him staggering backward.
A second later, his expression froze.
What was a hallucination?
Something unreal.
Imaginary.
Fake.
But the burning pain across his face was very real.
So was the sensation of his body being propelled backward.
And the warmth, pressure, and even faint scent coming from the other man’s hand were all telling him exactly the same thing.
This wasn’t a hallucination.
But if it wasn’t…
Tony’s train of thought abruptly stopped.
Because Evan had already shoved him straight through the Dimensional Door.
And brought him ten thousand meters into the sky.
Where Tony Stark was promptly introduced to the thrilling experience known as free fall.
“Wblblblblbl—!” An incomprehensible noise erupted from Tony’s mouth.
The violent air pressure tore at his face as he plummeted, stretching his features into increasingly bizarre shapes.
Evan fell beside him with both hands clasped behind his back.
The roaring wind and crushing pressure seemed to have absolutely no effect on him.
While Tony flailed through the air like a man who had just been personally betrayed by gravity, Evan looked perfectly calm and composed.
“The world’s a big place,” Evan said.
“Just because you can’t understand something doesn’t mean you should dismiss it as a hallucination and ignore it. Do that, and you’ll miss out on a lot of fun.”
He glanced toward the vast landscape below.
“And a lot of incredible views.”
“Wblblblblbl—!”
Tony Stark responded with another string of completely unintelligible noises.